Another thing I'd like to ask you. One of your paintings has a totally different fighting machine in design to the rest. I don't mean your handling machines either. The one spraying steam with the big green bug like eyes/windows. Was this an earlier design that you later dropped or what?

Another thing I'd like to ask you. One of your paintings has a totally different fighting machine in design to the rest. I don't mean your handling machines either. The one spraying steam with the big green bug like eyes/windows. Was this an earlier design that you later dropped or what?

Yes that's right http://www.eveofthewar.co.uk/images/peter_theblacksmoke.jpg was a test piece and although I was happy with the Painting I was not happy with the Fighting Machine design, it looked too much like Trims design and too stiff. so many of the designs I had seen where just stood still and I wanted mine to be animate,fast moveing and agile. Wells described the machines as looking more alive than the Martians.

So my next painting shall be the destrution of the train. This scene is not described in the book but we see the after effects in chapter 11 "At The Window". I want the Fighting Machine running full-pelt alongside the train, shooting it with it's Heat-Ray. it should look like the scene in Jurassic Park, when the T-Rex is chasing the Jeep.

Fantastic, I do believe that was my suggestion, and I can't wait to see it.

I asumed that was going to be the answer about the old fighting machine. And I agree with what you say about its simmilarity with Trims. And the stiffness of it. That's the one problem with the Musical Fighting Machines they look stiff. Like you say in the good book, those things move like poetry.
Your fighting machines definately look fast, agile, and flexible.

They don't carry the Black Smoke launchers with them as in the Good Book

It was a few minutes past nine that night when these three sentinels were joined by four other Martians, each carrying a thick black tube. A similar tube was handed to each of the three, and the seven proceeded to distribute themselves at equal distances along a curved line between St. George’s Hill, Weybridge, and the village of Send, southwest of Ripley.

I knew they carried the tubes of course but was wondering if you were adding artistic licence. I'm glad your not and am looking forward for a later rendition of one with the tube.
But didn't the Martians fire some black smoke at the Thunder Child?

Indeed they did and you can see the black smoke rolling behind the ship, the Fighting Machine that fired it is the one exploding and it has dropped the launcher in the sea Yeh that's it, sounds good to me

I once tried to do a comic version of a short ghost story called "The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson. I gave up about ⅛ into the story and I also started one, taken from a song by Genesis about time travel called "One for the Vine" and again I gave up . I think I'll leave it to those who know what they are doing

Fair enough. It is a terribly painstaking and exact art form. Especially to the standard you work at. I have a very powerful imagination and I can see it even though you haven't done it and believe me it's great.

Your fighting machines are so fluid that they would be perfect for the medium. Your pictures always have a wonderful sense of action and movement, perfect for comic strip story telling.

Good idea having the three pupils converging on each other. Were you tempted to do each one as a primary colour and the colours they make in the parts where they cross?

Wells may have been a bit sloppy with his ship classifications. For instance, in the novel, he refers to the warships of the Channel Fleet in general as "ironclads". That's WAY incorrect; by the time of the novel, the naval powers were building all-steel warships. An ironclad is essentially a WOODEN warship that was "clad" in iron plates (hence the name) for extra protection against the high-explosive shells that had been developed by the 1830s or 40s. Indeed, the metallurgy of those days was so primitive that an armored ship HAD to be wooden with a layer of iron; if the ship was made entirely of metal with no wood backing, the impact of a cannon ball or shell would crack the iron plates. About the only wars in which true ironclads saw extensive action were the American Civil War and the Russo-Turkish War of 1878, plus the Battle of Lissa in 1866 between the Italians and Austro-Hungarians. In addition, the Pacific War between Chile and Peru saw the Peruvian ironclad "Huascar" get involved in the ironclad equivalent of the "Bismarck" episode of World War II.

Good idea having the three pupils converging on each other. Were you tempted to do each one as a primary colour and the colours they make in the parts where they cross?

No, that would be too much like the 'Pal 53 film'.

Yeah I knew that and wondered if you had been tempted by that knowledge. Glad you didn't. It would be very difficult to make it look real anyway I think. The Old Pal version eyes are pretty crap anyway.

Any road I'm back online as from today so I should be able to post more now and regain my crown as top poster.

Wells may have been a bit sloppy with his ship classifications. For instance, in the novel, he refers to the warships of the Channel Fleet in general as "ironclads". That's WAY incorrect; by the time of the novel, the naval powers were building all-steel warships. An ironclad is essentially a WOODEN warship that was "clad" in iron plates (hence the name) for extra protection against the high-explosive shells that had been developed by the 1830s or 40s. Indeed, the metallurgy of those days was so primitive that an armored ship HAD to be wooden with a layer of iron; if the ship was made entirely of metal with no wood backing, the impact of a cannon ball or shell would crack the iron plates. About the only wars in which true ironclads saw extensive action were the American Civil War and the Russo-Turkish War of 1878, plus the Battle of Lissa in 1866 between the Italians and Austro-Hungarians. In addition, the Pacific War between Chile and Peru saw the Peruvian ironclad "Huascar" get involved in the ironclad equivalent of the "Bismarck" episode of World War II.

I'm way late here, but I have to correct you.

The term 'ironclad' does, indeed, imply a wooden vessel clad in iron armour. However, that is misleading. Although the first ever seagoing ironclad, the French 'La Gloire', was indeed a wooden ship clad in iron (as were the American Civil War vessels), Britain's first ironclad, 'Warrior', was iron through and through. We had the technological base, the French didn't. And apart from a class of small rigged ironclads built on wooden hulls simply to use up some hulls that had been built already, the British always built their broadside ironclads of iron.

You're correct about metal plates cracking if they have a metal backing - the Victorian ship designers knew that anyway, and that is why armour plates were always bolted to a thick teak backing, itself bolted onto the iron hull. One even sees in photos of dreadnoughts being launched in the 1910s a great teak-backed gap where the armour belt was to be fitted afterward.

The term 'ironclad' was used until the 1880s on an official basis, with 'battleship' being used officially for the first time with the all-steel 'Edinburgh' class central citadel turret ships. On a popular level, the term ironclad hung on for a lot longer.

However, Wells's naval terminology was always a bit suspect - even in 1907's 'The War in the Air', he still refers to battleships as ironclads, even though by then the Dreadnought age had started!

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